Classroom Management in a 1:1 Environment

       I decided to write a blog post about Classroom management in a 1:1 environment. I find this topic very interesting, and this is the one topic that I feel like I need to be better informed in. Technology and I have this kind of love/hate relationship, and it is the one thing I need to do more research on. I spent some time doing some extensive research on the topic and I would like to share them with you. The first two links I found are 2 presentations that I found helpful regarding classroom management. The last post is another person’s blog that I came across, and I found it so helpful that I wanted to share it with you. I really wanted to share on my blog a webinar that I watched on Classroom Management in a 1:1 Environment, but unfortunately I could not find any archived or available at the time. 

Classroom Management in a 1:1 Environment (Presentation) 

By: Steve Katz

http://www.slideshare.net/stevekatz/1to1-class-management

I really appreciated how Steve said that your curriculum drives the technology that you use in your classroom. It makes using technology and managing it in your classroom seem not so intimidating. One of my favorite parts of the presentation was the slide regarding incorporating the ISTE’s four C’s into your classroom. The four C’s that are mentation are; communication, collaboration, creativity, and community. I think these four things are some of the most important parts that should be found in every teachers classroom. Not only should you use them in your classroom, but you should using these with your fellow teachers. 

Steve also made some great comments in his presentation about using technology with a purpose and not make it sauce up a lesson or as a time filler. I really liked his ideas about what should be done first thing in the morning for your classroom. You should make sure your classroom laptops or tablets, are fully charged and ready to use. You should also manage your classroom and students by walking around and monitoring the work that is being done. I would like to apply information in my classroom to make sure I have proper classroom management.

He also made a great comment by saying just because you have a lap top in your classroom that does not mean it is going to help your classroom management. If you have poor classroom management laptops and iPads are not going to help. You have to be the one to make the changes to your classroom management skills. You need to make sure you have clear expectations for your students to follow, this will help things run smoothly in your classroom. I found this presentation very formal and full helpful information that will help you with your classroom management. 

Coaching Teachers in a 1:1 Environment (Presentation)

By: Stephanie Heitz and Kristina Bloch

http://prezi.com/okxx7h4i5kvh/coaching-teachers-in-a-11-environment-kyste-2014/

It seems to me more and more schools are starting to bring iPads into their classrooms. The schools are either allowing just the teachers to have one, and then the teachers can share them with the student. Some schools even have enough iPads at their school so that either each student has their own use in the classroom, or the teacher can take turn checking out for their students to take turn using. I really liked how this presentation mentioned that if the school is going to have them in the classroom; then the teacher should get them a full year or even two before they place them in the classroom. This way the teacher can become familiar with them and how they want to use them in their classroom. It is also important to have a wide variety of educational Apps for each school subject base.

There was a section in the presentation where it talked about classroom management and trust towards the students was a brilliant idea. I think that allowing the students to use tablets in the classroom helps give the students more responsibility and a sense of importance in the classroom.  You want the students to think that the device is their and they are in charge of taking care of it. The students can also use their device when they have free time to progress with their studies by playing educational games, reading, and watching videos. I think allowing students to have the use of an iPad in the classroom is a great idea, and I hope my future school have them for students to use. 

One of the things that I really appreciated about this presentation are the examples of classroom management they give that you could use in your classroom. A great example was the flipped classroom using math as the school subject. The flipped classroom for math can help explain everything to the student and it helps give them background knowledge. It also helps you as a teacher do things at your own pace, and you can make sure you teach the whole lesson. I just really like the idea  incorporating assignments and lessons onto the iPad.

Classroom Management in a 1:1 Environment (Blog)

By: Robert Schuetz

http://rtschuetz.blogspot.com/2013/02/classroom-management-in-11-environment.html

I am so glad that I found this blog, I found it so helpful! I am one of those people that struggle with understanding technology and would be the kind of person to blame technology for causing problems in my classroom. Robert Schuetz did say that there times where technology does distract and students, but you just have to use good management skills and modify the issue at hand. He also made a great point in his blog when he brought up continuously challenging and engaging the student during your lessons, this will help prevent the students from becoming with the subjects. 

All his suggestions for instructional design within your classroom was very helpful and I would like to apply that into my future classroom. The number one focus for your classroom management should revolve around your students. You want your lesson plans to have an emphasis on your student's learning capabilities. He said you also need to make sure you accommodate all your student’s learning styles and ability levels. As a teacher you need to realize that not all students learn at the same level or rate, you need to take that into account when you are teaching. 

His section on Student Management Strategies was interesting and full of great practices you can use in your classroom. I highly recommend reading Robert’s blog, it is full of advise and practices regarding classroom management, that you could apply into your own classroom. His idea about using a timer to keep your students focused on their task was a great idea. I would like to apply that in my classroom, and just pull up a time on my SMART Board, that way both the students and I would know how much time we have left. When I was a practicum student, my teacher would use timers during multiplication test, it helped motivate the students to meet their goal and pass their test. I recommend that if you are reading this blog you take the time to click on the link above and take a look at Robert's blog. 

SMART Notebook Files

I have chosen to find activities that are science related, and can be used in third grade classrooms. 

Engaging Leaners the SMART Board Way

http://eduscapes.com/sessions/smartboard/
http://sciencenetlinks.com/tools/lunar-cycle-2-the-challenge/

I really enjoyed what Eduscapes had to offer for SMART Notebook activities. I took the time to try out several different of the activities that were offered on this site.  They were very classroom and user friendly, it would be easy for your students to use. This website gave the viewer several different options on how to find activities, you could search by grade levels (Elementary and Middle/ Secondary) or you could search through the subject areas. I choose an activity that had to do with moon phases and it took me to another website called, sciencenetlinks. I really enjoyed learning about the moon phases through this activity. This activity offers three different levels and you can quit at anytime or start at any level you would like. I would use this activity in my classroom, it gave in depth lessons on the different phases. This would be an engaging way to keep the classes attention and help them learn the all the phases of the moon. It would also give the students the opportunity to come up and use the SMART Board, and have some hands on learning activities.

Kenton County School District 
http://www.kenton.k12.ky.us/content_page.aspx?cid=548
http://www.kenton.k12.ky.us/userfiles/1828/file/Skeleton.pdf

Kenton County School District offered a large selection of free SMART Notebook activities that you could use in your classroom. I clicked on their science section and found some different templates that could be used in a third grade classroom. Kenton County allowed access to just using the template or you could download the whole Notebook activity if you wanted too. I really liked the activity that they had available for the human skeleton. I would use the lesson to teach the class the name of the bones that are found body and where they are located. I would use the blank template to have the students try and guess where the correct label goes on the seleton. You can use the infinite cloner so they have students try the activity until they get it right. I would probably have the students name on a popsicle stick so I could call out them names and give everyone a chance to try and label the skeleton.

Longwood Central School District 

http://www.longwood.k12.ny.us/longsmart_elem.html

Longwood Central School District was a very well organized site, where you could find a lot of different templates that you could use in your classroom. The site was organized where you could search the different class subjects. Within those subjects you could found your grade level teaching and the activities that are offered. I really enjoyed the activity about the Water Cycle and liked what it had to offer. I would use SMART Notebook activity in my classroom. I could use it to give a quick lesson on how the water cycle works and then allow the class to try and label the water cycle correctly. Each student could come up and label a different part of the cycle and then repeat it a couple of times. That way everyone could have a chance to try it. Plus the more you repeat how the cycle works, the better chance they have of remembering it.

SMART Notebook

5 Tips and Trick for the SMART Board

By Adam Bellow

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xWNCHG-xB9o

The presenter did a wonderful job teaching the viewers how use some of basic tools found in SMART Notebook. He showed the viewers how to take a picture from the gallery and use the magic pen on the photo. He focused on several different ways on how you can use the magic pen. You can write on the uploaded picture and it will disappear after 10 seconds. You can draw a circle around an object and it will zoom in what you drew the circle on, and you can move the circle around the screen to focus on different parts of the picture. He also showed how you can draw a square around the picture and it will zoom in and you can move it around. He also showed us how to drag and drop a picture into my content so you can use it later. 

SMART Board - Elementary Education

By Sekolah TanpaBatas

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lCfmJCSAG70

This was a very simple, short, and helpful video. This video showed how you can use a picture that you accessed off the internet and copy it onto SMART Notebook. The video showed the view how you use the pointer tool on SMART Notebook to draw a square around the picture you want to use off the internet and paste it onto SMART Notebook. The video was very helpful and even showed how the students can use the board. The video also showed the user how to double click on an object so you could move it around, rotate it, and effects to it. 

Simple SMART Board Activities 

By H Berndt

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JSMeunjRoPk

This was a very user friendly video. If you have never used SMART Notebook and are in need of a simple tutorial, then I highly recommend that you watch this 16 minute video. This video gives you step by step directions on how to start using SMART Notebook. The presenters main focus was on using the Lesson Activity Toolkit 2.0, found under the gallery tab on the side toolbar. They show you how to use some of the activities that would be great in a classroom setting. They also teach you how to modify some of the activities and make it your own. I plan on using this video in the future and plan on watching it a few more times, just so I can get the hang of how to use SMART Notebook.

Collecting Ideas from Other Blogs

Blog Reflection

I spent some time looking at my fellow classmates’ blogs and found some interesting and informative posts. I read an article about increasing the use of technology in the classroom by having iPads in the classroom from Kim’s blog. Technology is becoming more prevalent in the classrooms these days, and is very important incorporate into your teachings. I then went over to Laura’s blog and read about using a timer through Google. She was going to use this tool both in her future classroom and also at home as a morning alarm. I thought that was a great idea using it both at home and in the classroom. The next blog that read was from Gaby, she wrote about online quizzes being used in the classroom. She gave some great insights on how she plans on using them in her classroom.

Connection to Teaching

Kids are so tech savvy these days, that it makes sense to have iPads in the classroom. There are some great educational apps out there that will make it easier for some students to learn. I really hope the future school that I teach at supplies a couple of iPads for teachers to use in their classroom. I really do think that they are beneficial for the students. 

 Since I have started my work in my Wikispace, I have researched a lot online tools that you can use that will allow you to create you own quizzes and test. I think using these online tools for creating quizzes are fantastic, I would probably use them as practice tools for my students. This will allow the students to have instant feedback after they have completed the quiz, and it will show what questions they have missed and what they got right. This will help them know what areas they need to increase practice time in. I truly enjoyed getting to read my classmates’ blogs and would love to try some of these ideas in my future classroom.

I have noticed while shadowing in my friend’s classrooms and even my practium teacher’s classroom, that they all use online timers and stopwatches. They usually pull them up on the SMART board, this allows the students to know how much time left on their current activity. I am defiantly going to incorporate online stopwatches and timers in my classroom. I think they are a great and helpful tool, for both the teacher and the students. 

Using animated movie technology as a teaching tools.

In this day in age as a teacher you find yourself incorporating more technology into your educational lessons in the classroom. The SMART board is the leading contender for making your job a little easier. I logged onto my Feedly account this afternoon to see what some of my main headlines were for this fine Saturday. A headline that caught my eye was an article from Emgeringedtec, which I follow on my Feedly. This website was called, Tweet Week – Collected Education Technology Tweets for the Week of 01-27-14 (just click on the title and will give you the option to read this article). I thought this article would be a perfect one to share with teachers who love to use educational technology in their classroom and have the access to a SMART board. This website will gave you the access to 13 different websites pertaining to the use of technology in the classroom, it also shared the 3 more related posts at the bottom of the page. Out of the 16 sites that were offered on this article I really like the one called, How Students Can Create Animated Movies to Teach Each Other. I attached the URL that will take to you this blog at the bottom of this post.

I personally thought this blog was a great read and a wonderful teaching tool. The writer of this blog also took the time to describe how you could break your class down into different groups, and do this in your own class. Most kids are pros at using technology and you can probably do this activity with grades 3-6, and definatly for those who are in Junior High and High School. Not only did the author of this blog take the time to break down this idea for anyone to do, but they also attached a Youtube video as a great example. I know that when the time has come and I am finally in a classroom setting, I will be using this idea in my classroom. I am already thinking of all the different lessons that I could use this for, starting with math and reading and going on from there. I hope you find this article and blog as fascinating as I did.

 

http://jcollierblog.com/edtech/how-students-can-create-animated-movies-to-teach-each-other/

Stop. Look. And Pay Attention. Here's a great teaching technique

Most days I look through my Facebook newsfeed and see the same boring status updates. Yes it's cold, and yes it's going to be that way for a while. I do believe that's how Winter is every year, but today was different. I was scrolling through Facebook bright and early this morning, and I found a post from a fellow teacher that caught my eye. It was a beautiful blog written by a parent who was meeting with their child's teacher about how they were worried about helping their child do their homework, when they themselves did not even know how to do it. Not only did the parent get tutored by their child's teacher, but she also had the opportunity to learn how this teacher was making a difference in the classroom. This teacher was taking the time to ask their students who they wanted to sit by and who they thought deserved to be the citizen of the week. Then she was taking the information she complied and compared it each week she asked this question. She would pay attention to the changes and trying to find out who was being left out and bullied. This teacher is taking the time to make sure all of her students are getting treated equally and is trying to make a difference in her classroom.

I personally think that you can incorporate this idea in your classroom in so many different ways. Instead of asking the class who they want to sit next to, you can ask them who they would want in their reading group. You could pretty much tie this idea into any of the subjects you teach or activities you do inside the classroom. I think this approach will also help you notice if any students are not progressing as fast as other student in certain subjects. If you have your class set up to do work on computers you could have them do and submit the questionnaire over the computer. They could practice their use of technology and you could access them online after the class has left. 

I attached the URL code for this story below. All you have to do is click on, Share This With All The Schools, Please. Once you do, it should give you the option to click on the link, and take you to this wonderful blog. If that does not work I have attached the whole blog at the bottom of the page, so you have an opportunity to read this amazing story, and maybe you to can get inspired and incorporate something like this into your classroom. 

Share This With All the Schools, Please

A few weeks ago, I went into Chase’s class for tutoring.

I’d emailed Chase’s teacher one evening and said, “Chase keeps telling me that this stuff you’re sending home is math – but I’m not sure I believe him. Help, please.” She emailed right back and said, “No problem! I can tutor Chase after school anytime.” And I said, “No, not him. Me. He gets it. Help me.” And that’s how I ended up standing at a chalkboard in an empty fifth grade classroom staring at rows of shapes that Chase’s teacher kept referring to as “numbers.”

I stood a little shakily at the chalkboard while Chase’s teacher sat behind me, perched on her desk, using a soothing voice to try to help me understand the “new way we teach long division.”  Luckily for me, I didn’t have to unlearn much because I never really understood the “old way we taught long division.” It took me a solid hour to complete one problem, but l could tell that Chase’s teacher liked me anyway. She used to work with NASA, so obviously we have a whole lot in common.

Afterwards, we sat for a few minutes and talked about teaching children and what a sacred trust and responsibility it is. We agreed that subjects like math and reading are the least important things that are learned in a classroom. We talked about shaping little hearts to become contributors to a larger  community – and we discussed our mutual dream that those communities might be made up of individuals who are Kind and Brave above all.

And then she told me this.

Every Friday afternoon Chase’s teacher asks her students to take out a piece of paper and write down the names of four children with whom they’d like to sit the following week. The children know that these requests may or may not be honored. She also asks the students to nominate one student whom they believe has been an exceptional classroom citizen that week. All ballots are privately submitted to her.

And every single Friday afternoon, after the students go home, Chase’s teacher takes out those slips of paper, places them in front of her and studies them. She looks for patterns.

Who is not getting requested by anyone else?

Who doesn’t even know who to request?

Who never gets noticed enough to be nominated?

Who had a million friends last week and none this week?

You see, Chase’s teacher is not looking for a new seating chart or “exceptional citizens.” Chase’s teacher is looking for lonely children. She’s looking for children who are struggling to connect with other children. She’s identifying the little ones who are falling through the cracks of the class’s social life. She is discovering whose gifts are going unnoticed by their peers. And she’s pinning down- right away- who’s being bullied and who is doing the bullying.

As a teacher, parent, and lover of all children – I think that this is the most brilliant Love Ninja strategy I have ever encountered. It’s like taking an X-ray of a classroom to see beneath the surface of things and into the hearts of students. It is like mining for gold – the gold being those little ones who need a little help – who need adults to step in and TEACH them how to make friends, how to ask others to play, how to join a group, or how to share their gifts with others. And it’s a bully deterrent because every teacher knows that bullying usually happens outside of her eyeshot –  and that often kids being bullied are too intimidated to share. But as she said – the truth comes out on those safe, private, little sheets of paper.

As Chase’s teacher explained this simple, ingenious idea – I stared at her with my mouth hanging open. “How long have you been using this system?” I said.

Ever since Columbine, she said.  Every single Friday afternoon since Columbine.

Good Lord.

This brilliant woman watched Columbine knowing that ALL VIOLENCE BEGINS WITH DISCONNECTION. All outward violence begins as inner loneliness. She watched that tragedy KNOWING that children who aren’t being noticed will eventually resort to being noticed by any means necessary.

And so she decided to start fighting violence early and often, and with the world within her reach. What Chase’s teacher is doing when she sits in her empty classroom studying those lists written with shaky 11 year old hands  - is SAVING LIVES. I am convinced of it. She is saving lives.

And what this mathematician has learned while using this system is something she really already knew: that everything – even love, even belonging – has a pattern to it. And she finds those patterns through those lists – she breaks the codes of disconnection. And then she gets lonely kids the help they need. It’s math to her. It’s MATH.

All is love- even math.  Amazing.

Chase’s teacher retires this year –  after decades of saving lives. What a way to spend a life: looking for patterns of love and loneliness. Stepping in, every single day-  and altering the trajectory of our world.

TEACH ON, WARRIORS. You are the first responders, the front line, the disconnection detectives, and the best and ONLY hope we’ve got for a better world. What you do in those classrooms when no one  is watching-  it’s our best hope.

Teachers- you’ve got a million parents behind you whispering together: “We don’t care about the damn standardized tests. We only care that you teach our children to be Brave and Kind. And we thank you. We thank you for saving lives.”

Love – All of Us 

Feedly

Welcome to my very first post on my new blog. I have a couple of questions for those who have taken the time to stop by and read my blog. Do you spend a lot of your free time on Pinterest getting ideas for your classroom? Do you use Pinterest to help find other teachers' blogs to get classroom ideas? Well I was recently introduced to a wonderful website that creates easy access to different blogs, educational headlines, and helpful classroom techniques. I would like to share and talk about this website and how easy it is for you to use as well. I was first introduced to this site in my Educational Applications of Technology and Media class. This website is called Feedly, and I have found this website to be a helpful and easy tool to use for classroom settings. I  have attached at the bottom of this post a picture of my Feedly, just to show you how easy it for you to use.

One of the great parts about this site is it can be attached to your google account if you already have one set up. You just have to log in and it will allow you to start up your own Feedly. You can create your own tabs and then attach the blogs and sites that you want to follow, just like you do on Pinterest! As you can see in my picture, I have created two tabs so far, one I called Teaching Tools and the other Technology. When you are ready to start looking for articles and blogs all you have to do is click on Add Content, and type in the keywords you are interested in looking up. I like to click on the top sites and see what their headline stories are, and what kind of content they use, and see if they are useful for classroom use. If you like what you see on that site or blog then you can click Add at the bottom of the screen and attach it to any tab you have created or you can make a new one! The best way to view all the new content from the sites you have posted is to click All, under My Feedly.